


Plyushkin

by allollipoppins



Series: Detroit : Beyond Human [3]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Light Angst around the end but nothing big I promise, short and fluffy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 16:18:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14957949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allollipoppins/pseuds/allollipoppins
Summary: "Plyushkin": a Russian term applied nowadays when talking about compulsive hoarders.Connor is a hoarder, Kara indulges him.(Or, 5 times Connor collected things, and the one time he gave Kara something of her own.)





	Plyushkin

**Author's Note:**

> I'd had this prompt in mind for a bit but I didn't think I'd be working on it so soon. Anxiety, work and people have been really getting on my nerves this week and I needed something short and fluffy to keep myself level-headed so here we are.
> 
> Friendly reminder that I am open to Connara and/or Marconnara prompts for drabbles ^^ ideas feed me just as much as comments and kudos do, and are always much appreciated.

**1**

 

If Kara had to pinpoint the exact moment when she started noticing his habit, it was the umpteenth Friday Hank came home with Sumo. Which is also, coincidentally, the umpteenth time she finds herself waking up to a cold resin nose digging into her cheek.

She blinks owlishly, her system slowly but surely rebooting, her sensory captors zooming in on the appendage, then the rest of the object resting against her face. The face of a cream-coloured teddy bear smiled up at her from where it laid, caught in the steel grip of Alice’s arms. Connor’s fingers are buried in its belly, and Kara spies another animal lounging not so far behind his head, partially squished under his weight. She has to suppress a giggle at that.

She slowly extricates herself from the bed, her arms leaving Alice’s waist. The little girl whines in her sleep, then turns to the side as she scoots to the spot Kara occupied, Connor moving to the allocated space Alice had left. The sight of her little family is enough to put her smile on her lips.

Looking around herself, Alice’s room was like a small menagerie now, filled with animals of all kind, all scattered everywhere on the bed, the floor and the shelves. Alice hadn’t asked for more plushes in the first place, though. That had all been Connor’s idea.

The plushes are gifts for Alice. “So she can get used to sleeping without us,” Connor had said, as if he really had any desire to spend the rest of his life not sleeping by their baby girl’s side, in spite of the days when they both want their… ahem, privacy.

Part of her knew that the gesture itself was more for Connor than for Alice. While it pleased him to see her face light up whenever she saw her new toys, he wasn’t doing it only to be a good father. Connor seems to just like having them around. She had never taken him for that kind of person, but she doesn’t find it particularly strange either. Kara can’t say that she understands, having never given much value to material things both before and after turning deviant. It felt selfish back then, to think of herself when Alice needed her most, especially when she didn’t have need for anything – Alice hadn’t either, but she hadn’t been aware of it at the time.

Connor had even less reasons than them to be attached to human artefacts, but from what Kara gathered he took a certain pleasure in them; one she didn’t understand, but that she simply accepted. It didn’t cause harm to anyone. Besides, when was the last time that poor boy had anything of his own? Even the uniform on his shoulders had never been his, if only another symbol of a corporation’s ownership over him.

Among the toys she finds the one brown fox plush Alice had kept, scavenged before leaving for Canada. She picks it up, looking at the slightly tattered, yet all-familiar face of the animal that was close to losing its button eye, its belly mangled from a bad encounter with Sumo. Thankfully they had gotten to it in time and the damage had been minimal.

Kara filed “sewing Alice’s fox” on her to-do list of the day, followed by “trip to the toy store”.

 

**2**

 

 

“I can’t remember the last time I actually had a cd in my hands.”

Kara turns the albums in her hands, taking a close look at the pictures and the tracklists printed on the mostly black jackets. She studies some of the names and covers. AC/DC, Guns & Roses, Metallica, Iron Maiden, Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, vaguely familiar but not things her musical registry is closely acquainted with. She could swear having seen the faces on the covers too, at several occasions, but it was hard to tell when they all looked the exact same: older men with long curly hair. Did all men of the old generation look and dress like that?

“Right?” Connor asks at her side, a hint of awe in his voice. “Isn’t it amazing, to actually hold the music in your hands and not just have it instantly downloaded inside your mind?”

Kara squints at the “Parental Advisory Explicit Content” label on the bottom right of the albums. There is an entire pile of them right by the radio and cd player, all with the same words printed in small, black-and-white print. She is not terribly impressed.

“Just don’t play them when Alice is around, or don’t put them on too loud I guess.”

It wouldn’t make much of a difference. Todd had had nothing but colourful words for the both of them back in Detroit, Hank swore like a sailor around anyone, regardless of age or gender; Alice had most probably registered half of his vocabulary already. Statistically they should have a while before she would start swearing – if she ever did – and Kara wasn’t taking a chance.

Connor nodded vigorously, the way his head bobbed reminding her of the way Sumo’s did at times. “I love you,” he whispered, leaning in to kiss her cheek, then passing by to go check on Alice.

Kara steals a sideways look at Hank playing with the two of them, the hem of his flowery shirt spilling from under his leather jacket, his hair falling in long bangs over his face and his beard as full as always. Then takes another look at the album in her hands.

It does seems like all men looked that way at the time.

 

**3**

 

“Hey, when you see Connor can you give him this?” Hank asks her one day before heading to patrol.

“Sure,” Kara replies to Hank before she even thinks of asking what it is exactly he needs her to hand Connor. The sudden brush of his fingers n the back of her hand momentarily startles her, until he presses something in the centre of her palm. Nothing heavy, but dense enough that it holds a certain weight, smooth edges that form lines around a circular shape.

Curious, Kara looks down at the object in her hand.

It’s a quarter. A 1960 Washington quarter to be more precise with, she notes as she flips it on the other side, an eagle with its wings spread open.

Kara peers up at Hank, curious. “What is that for?” she asks. It isn’t often that she gets to handle physical money, often making most of her payments through virtual means. And she generally keeps a respectable distance from Connor’s coin collection. While he had never made an indication that he didn’t like his collection being touched, she knew he probably wouldn’t appreciate someone tampering with it.

Hank scratched a spot on his head, looking almost sheepish. “It’s Connor’s actually. I er, kind of confiscated it from him last time because he wouldn’t stop playing with it. Said something about how it honed his capacities and kept him focused, but really it was driving me mad.”

Oh, yes. Realization dawns on her. “He did mention you stealing his coin once at work. At least,” she chuckles, “it wasn’t the 1994. That’s his favourite.”

Hank squints, then sighs. “It’s just a coin and they all look the same, what difference does it make?” he says, though the smirk that makes its way on his lips betrays his words.

Kara gives a shrug of her own. “Would I be wrong in saying that is a “men” thing?”

Hank laughs. “No. No, I suppose you’d be right. Guess androids aren’t that different in that department either.”

 

**4**

 

Kara is quick to learn that no family outing is complete without a trip to the mall’s local pet store.

It would concern her less if, somewhere in the middle of each visit, they didn’t find themselves adopting every single fish they could find. Or rather, if Connor didn’t adopt all of them. Kara doesn’t even know how she came to not question it.

“Kara,” Connor stage-whispers, as if he were afraid that should he speak louder, he would frighten all the animals.

She hums, letting a guinea pig nudge her finger through the bars of its cage. It stares up at her with curiosity, unafraid, its beady black eyes following her every movement.

Behind them, Alice taps her fingers against the aquariums, gently but hard enough that the fish jump away at the sound of her nail rapping on the glass panes.

“No, not like that Alice,” Connor moves from her side and admonishes her softly, and it would be more convincing if the enthusiasm in his voice weren’t so clear. He leans over the little girl’s shoulder, crouching to her level at an angle that looks rather uncomfortable, but that doesn’t seem to bother him.

She spies the way Connor’s eyes widen, following the fish’s course through the aquarium as it darts from corner to corner before his gaze, its body undulating and creating microscopic ripples in the water.

“Kara” he says her name again, still transfixed by the fish, and oh, there it is. Connor turns to her, a smile stretching across his lips in an all too familiar way that means trouble. Kara is almost tempted to say that it looks mischievous, but she reads no such thing in his expression. She has seen Connor teasing, Connor playful, Connor sarcastic. But impish? No way.

Kara frowns at the glass. Their freshwater tank at home is almost filled to the brim, even though most of the fish are small, and the saltwater aquarium is starting to to overflow too.

Connor’s smile falls when his question is met with her silence. Kara could swear she sees the corners of his mouth wobble slightly – are androids even capable of that? – and it takes all of her self-restraint not to give in. The last time she had said no to him, Connor had whined after she had put her foot down at the suggestion of adopting a regal blue tang, arguing that they were much too rare and endangered to be put in an aquarium, nevermind that most of the fish in the pet shop probably hadn’t been acquired through legal procedures. A quick scan of the tank also tells her that the fish Connor had been eyeing wouldn’t last very long either. She was always careful to let him pick fish that were likely to survive longer than others, in spite of the fact that Connor was conscientious enough when it cam to his fish that most of them would probably still be around in a decade.

… Maybe one more won’t hurt?

Kara finally sighs.

“We’re going to need a bigger tank,” she says, and just like that Connor beams at her.

She shares a glance with Alice, who shares her head in a matter she isn’t sure how to interpret, both of them watching as Connor calls one of the assistants asking for a catalogue of tank models and fish food for the little one.

Kara doesn’t have the heart to complain when she sees Connor softly cooing at their new goldfish, lovingly named Amy.

 

**5**

 

Finding a use for the kitchen drawers becomes much easier with Hank around. While most things they stash away don’t last very long or gather dust on the shelves, Kara always manages to find a use to them whenever the lieutenant comes to visit, which is increasingly more often – if not to say a nightly occurrence. It makes Alice feel bad for having to “kick him out of the house” past midnight, sending him back to an empty home with equally empty drawers and no one save for Sumo waiting for him, but Hank had assured her that their guest room was best kept for other visitors. Besides, he had added with a wink, he wouldn’t want to bother or interrupt them. Kara was certain her cheeks and ears had turned a flaming red at the implication.

There is, however, a drawer in the kitchen Kara is glad Alice can’t reach.

Holding the gun in her hand, twirling it between her fingers is, she finds, becoming an increasingly more uncomfortable feeling with every day that passes. It is without a doubt the one human creation that she hates most in the whole wide world. Nothing about the fact that it is a necessary evil in Connor’s and Hank’s profession makes it any easier. To often she had seen ill-meaning men handling such weapons. Todd, Zlatko, the police forces of Detroit… even sweet Luther had kept one on himself. For safety, his words echo in her mind, but they don’t put it at ease.

Kara pushes the gun back where it belongs, making sure not to leave a trace, even when she knows very well that Connor would know that she saw it.

A necessary evil, she repeats to herself through the day, letting herself – forcing herself – to forget.

 

**\+ 1**

 

Kara knows something is wrong the moment Connor enters the living room. Scratch that, she knows something is up the moment he comes into the house.

She cannot see him from where she stands, busying herself with ironing and folding laundry. In the hall behind her, she hears Connor calling them, and Alice greeting him cheerily at the door. Her ears perk up when her voice quietens, dropping into a whisper – no, she realizes a beat later, there are two voices whispering in the hall. Sensing a change in the other room, Kara turns the iron off with a single hand and sets it gently on the ironing board, then turns when footsteps come behind her.

Connor smiles at her from where he stands in the doorway.

She notices that he has his hands behind his back, as if he were tugging something in his back pocket, the way she had seen him do it with his gun holster... Or as if he were hiding something. She frowns.

“Connor?” Kara asks, apprehensive.

“I’m home,” he answers, smiling at her. One of his hands shifts behind his back, tugging at something that he brings forward until –

“It’s for you,” Connor says, his voice dropping slightly, eyes lowered onto the object he is holding. Kara gasps as he takes in the large bouquet of flowers in his hand, which she recognizes quickly. Roses. Red, and freshly cut.

The flowers… these are for her.

“I – I couldn’t think of anything else to surprise you with and, and I thought, well she doesn’t have flowers, does she?”

Kara stares at him, mouth agape, not emitting a single sound. His face pales.

“Crap, I shouldn’t have done, honestly it was Hank’s idea, I just asked him for ideas and he said it was the – ”

Kara doesn’t leave him time to finish before she crosses the room in several strides, takes his face between her hands and kisses him. When she pulls back, Connor’s cheeks are slightly flushed, gasping softly. She knows that she must definitely look the same.

“I love them,” Kara murmurs. “Guess I wouldn’t mind having more of these around the house.”

**Author's Note:**

> Cookies if you can guess why Connor’s new fish is named Amy ;)  
> Again, feel free to submit Connara and/or Marconnara prompts for drabbles on tumblr ^^  
> Kudos, comments and bookmarks are always appreciated :)  
> I'm @allollipoppins on tumblr & @AriL10N355 on twitter, hmu!


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